Breakout year for SF

Id just wait till next year and sell off a couple more parks :)

I would NOT allow attractions to sit idle and stare at guests like "ghosts of attractions past". Oh, wait, I am desrcibing Flashback...and Sky Tower.

And without new attractions to build and repair/maintain (X, DVs, V2.1, etc., LOL.), hopefully they'll recognize that more, and more qualified/motivated better-funded maintenance staff, and better-staffed rides, and better food, will go further with guests in OPERATING the rides moreso than "plop down another new attraction sitting next to one that hasn't run in ages". Seems likely that they *get it* infinitely more than the old regime was EVER going to...

How can you blame Shapiro for last year? Was It his fault that Eltoro was 3million$ over budget? Where do you think that money came from? He either had to cut other budgets or let the coaster sit unfinished all year. How about other coasters and rides like Tatsu. I am in the constuction buisness and 99.9% of the time when a contract is signed for X amount of dollars the final price always ends up more for lots of reasons. This season it is all on Shapiro and his boss and stockholders will make sure that the promises are kept.

But you know, I believe Shapiro can handle the skeptics and cynics. I certainly don't feel sorry for the guy. He's taking a bit of the beating (at least here) that unfortunately can't be dished out to the old regime.

But he'll also get the glory if SF has a much improved 2007 and beyond.

There goes AJ, Right on cue.

How many rides were closed on a daily average at SFGADV last year? Did things change or not?

Chuck, who can go to CF and most other parks and if more than one or two aren't operating, It's abnormal. Not the norm. Maybe he does get it, NOW.

^ I don't know C.N. but why don't you ask me how many were closed daily at SFNE since it is my home park. The answer would be zero with Catapult once in a while.

One thing that cedarfair and disney both pride themselfs on is ride uptime.

Cant remember the name of the show I was watching, but it was on disney and the monorail. They mentiond that the monorali has 99.8% uptime.

Also, when I worked at cedarpoint, the maintnance staff earned a bigger bonus for less ride downtime.

Every six flags park that I have been to(except chicago), had several rides not operating. They keep raising the prices on things at the parks, but rides are still sitting there with "sorry , this attraction closed" signs.

Oh and A.J. How about the one train operation at your park forcing one to spend a extra 59.95 just to be able to enjoy it?

Most stuff was up when I visited SFNE as well as at SFSTL but for some reason SFNE's operations just turned me off and the pricing inside the park seemed much more nuts than most parks. 2 drinks for 10 dollars.

Chuck

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Ajrides said:
^ I don't know C.N. but why don't you ask me how many were closed daily at SFNE since it is my home park. The answer would be zero with Catapult once in a while.

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Uptime isn't really a huge issue at most SF parks, it's capacity.

SFNE's used to be pretty woeful and it was the park's fault, specifically, letting S:RoS run with one train for so long.

SFNE's capacity now is still pretty anemic but it's not especially management's fault - attendance has exploded and this is one of the few parks in the chain IMO that could greatly benefit from a couple more major coasters.

Lines for all the coasters remain pretty long a lot of the time, and there are plenty of redundant, looping flat rides that are just overkill. The park has Catapult, Time Warp, Batwing, Twister,and Double Trouble which I think are all great but they don't do enough to cut lines for the more major attractions.

It's a good problem to have, SFNE has the biggest waterpark I've ever been to and it's still not enough on some days.

Excellent point. Even if all the rides are open, they should be run better. Great Adventure usually has an excellent crew running Nitro- they should visit all the other Six Flags parks and coasters and show them how it's done. Nothing is more irritating than waiting in a huge line for one-train operation... unless that huge line is being made worse by people that paid to jump ahead of everyone else. That makes people feel ripped off even more than they did before because it's telling them they should have paid extra money, too.

I get it... Shapiro inherited a terrible company that was in terrible shape. But as someone else said, if he turns things around, he's going to reap all the benefits and dance in all the glory that surrounds his success. Unfair as it may be, no one who went to a SF park last year and walked away unhappy is going to put the blame on the previous regime, they're going to put the blame on Shapiro because he's the guy that was in charge of the company on the day that they visited.

The truth is, new CEOs always have to unload the baggage that was handed to them- it's part of the game. And while I will admit that they guy made some improvements to the SF experience, it cannot be ignored that MANY people feel the experience didn't live up to what they were led to believe, and that will be a problem and something to complain about until things are right once and for all.

Unfortunately, your right.

If we remove the "regimes" from the discussion, it all comes down to the bottom line, are the parks in better shape as we type here today. The answer would be partly yes, mostly no. And the average guest is going to think in those terms.

I like Mark Shapiro, that's no secret. I think he's just the right match (brains and brawn) for this long troubled company. But that doesn't change the fact that the parks (with a few MAJOR exceptions), are still a pain to visit. And right now it seems as though the larger the park, the larger the pain it is to visit.

Despite what others seem to think, Shapiro will earn every single penny of his paycheck.

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DWeaver said:
If we remove the "regimes" from the discussion, it all comes down to the bottom line, are the parks in better shape as we type here today. The answer would be partly yes, mostly no.

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I think the above quote is the one single thing we can all agree on regardless of your position.

A little better in 2006, but still not fixed. I suspect the same slow progress in 2007 and 2008 and so on. At some point you'll hit a place where more has been improved than hasn't and then the turnaround is clear. A few years beyond that point and it's done.

So we've come full circle, haven't we. The parks are marginally better off than before, but that's the result of one season with a 3 month lead who's details were already set by the bozos who killed things.

Time is the answer. (which has been the crux of the 'pro-Shapiro' side from the start)

It's a little better today, it'll be even better tomorrow and better still the day after that. If we can visit one of the 'average' SF parks in 2009 and have a mostly positive experience (not perfect, but better than bad), then that's a win in my book.

Is that perfect? Nope. Is it a win for Shapiro? Without a doubt.

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crazy horse said:
One thing that cedarfair and disney both pride themselfs on is ride uptime.

Cant remember the name of the show I was watching, but it was on disney and the monorail. They mentiond that the monorali has 99.8% uptime.

Also, when I worked at cedarpoint, the maintnance staff earned a bigger bonus for less ride downtime.

Every six flags park that I have been to(except chicago), had several rides not operating. They keep raising the prices on things at the parks, but rides are still sitting there with "sorry , this attraction closed" signs.

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Having like 17 monorails (I forget how many, but it's a lot.) would the reason why. They are like trains. The train is up that much too. However, when I was at Disneyland, the monorail broke down. That's probably the .02%. Just kidding, but it did brake down, I couldn't go back on it. How many rides at Cedar Point are open during that May 13-18 week. I betcha it's just like other Six Flags parks.

Less people=less rides open. However, most of them (especially you are a bigger park) are the flats.

The problem I have with that theory is the fact that because less rides are open might mean that there are less people. People start to realize that parks (seasonal) are finally open come Father's Day and especially in July, and August. Maybe, the whole problem is that no one knows that they are open earlier, or they feel that all the rides won't be open. Change the publics view, and more people will be at the amusement parks earlier than they are now (seasonal parks).

So, have new rides open, and mostly all the rides are opening day. Advertise it also.

However, this kind of ruins going to the park because it might as crowded in August as in would be in June. There are two sides to me. I want them to get more people, but yet I don't.

Stop bashing shapiro. Last years gadv budget was basically spent before he even got his job.

The budget for last year was decided upon already by the old management. Probably to stick it to the new management that took over.

Shapiro stated that runaway minetrain would be clsoed the rest of the year .What happened? HE moved some money around and got it open again.

Last year was not shapiros fault. They did the best they could with what little money was left when they took over. You cant have maintanance crews work on rides if there is no money to pay them.

Now if after this year irides are closed then you can blame them since shapiro andd company would have had control of the money.

I just wish people See the facts and not blindly bash the company.

Don't get me wrong, I like Shapiro too. I think he has a lot of good ideas and I think he's open-minded enough to embrace change that others in the industry have been either unwilling or unable to embrace. And I agree with Gonch that things are going to take time- Rome wasn't built in a day and Six Flags won't be rebuilt in a day. Still, it goes back to how it's all presented. Don't promise the world (or announce that you're going to offer the world, or however it was originally phrased) when you don't have the world to give. If you don't have the budget to ensure that ALL coasters will be up and running, don't tell people that they'll all be up and running. Focus on promoting what you have to promote, that's all.

I'm excited to see what Shapiro will do in the future, but right now I'm with a lot of other people and will be a little hesitant to include a bunch of Six Flags parks in my travel plans until I know that things are turning around. Maybe that will take five years- who knows? I'm fairly young, I can wait.

Whether you like it or not, Shapiro is the guy in charge; therefore, it makes him responsible for the problems. While he isn't the "cause" of all the issues, due to his position, he's pretty much automatically responsible.

Time will tell, yes. As far as the parks being marginally better, this could be true. But each park getting better with each passing day? I disagree--last season was started better than it ended, so to me, it looked like things went downhill, not uphill, and we ended up back almost where we started.

However, due to some of the rides that have come down, as well as the new park additions, it does look like things are headed in the right direction. Cleaning up SFMM and SFGAdv are definitely good things.

Does anybody know if the fixes to the north end of SFNE would have been Shapiro & Co.'s doing?

Just curious, if only because if Shapiro can take credit for that, then I think it spells good news for the rest of the parks in the chain. Very practical, sensical stuff going on there that really did improve something that wasn't completely awful to begin with.

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Spinout said:

How many rides at Cedar Point are open during that May 13-18 week.

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Um.... all of them?

Ray P.

^ I'm willing to bet there are more Cedar Point rides open in the middle of May than Great Adventure rides open in the middle of July.

I'd say you're right about that. Unless a ride at CP has something MAJOR go wrong with it (like TTD's gearbox failing at the end of the '05 season), it'll be open as much as possible.